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I realized recently how models are looking a bit more human these days than they have in a while. Clearly, not your standard human, but still, closer to living, breathing bipeds. It was with this new realization in mind this morning, that I was thumbing through my standard "women´s interest" admittedly generally toilet reading. So, I get past the first few pages, and I am assaulted by this beyond emaciated woman walking out of some indiscernible body of water in a white bikini. Not nearly as human-looking as even Carmen Electra´s ad hawking MAC Cosmetics on the opposite page, done up with more makeup than a drag queen could use in a month. Nor does she look as human as most of the other women selling all kinds of different, equally useless products in the pages of the magazine in question. In that context, she simply stood out, with her painfully consummate wasting—an unwelcome throwback to the early-90´s infamous heroin chic, just a little heavier on the under-eye concealer and a little lighter on the eye-liner. White with wet blond hair, blue eyes and lips that defy her race, this presumable "woman" looks like a late-stage AIDS patient from the neck down. Sexy, right?
Give me a break! Or better yet, break this girl off a piece of your KitKat bar. Honestly, the ad is about as sexy as a hemorrhoid crème commercial. The model´s strapless white bikini seems to be achieving the impossible simply by failing to fall off. I imagine someone has strategically placed clips in the back of the suit to tighten it down to her inhuman size. I also imagine that she has strategically placed food into the same "do not consume" category as those little silica gel packets you find inside of nearly everything new in this country.
At any rate, normally, my toilet reading doesn´t require or elicit any genuine meaningful thought, but this ad struck me. I´ve since shown it to a few friends, most of whom have told me that she looked like any other model and that I´m one to talk, despite the fact that I easily have at least 20 pounds on this chick. Regardless, the ad still struck me as particularly appalling for some reason. As a result, justified or not, I cannot help but blame the designer, which is admittedly much easier in my mind, given the fact that I´ve always found Calvin Klein´s designs to be about as exciting and innovative as a cardboard box. I´m sure other designers employ equally malnourished models, but fuck it, I´m going to get specific. And in doing so, I´m assuring that this will not appear in any of the publications frequently neighboring my toilet. It turns out that for some reason most magazines aren´t too keen on publishing articles openly debasing and disparaging their advertisers. Shocking, right?
So, as a result, a new file of publications has been created on my desktop (specifically, noCKads.doc), meaning that, sadly, my readers will have to hunt down the ad in question in a less "progressive," more "mainstream" publication. Or you can just envision it in your head, relying on these words as a guide. If you´re reading this piece, you´re likely past the need for picture books anyway.
So, my immediate response (after thinking, "Damn, someone feed this child!") was that apparently, Mr. Calvin Klein never got the memo about heroin chic being out, way out—wet or dry. I should confess here that despite the absolute senselessness of it, I am a huge fan of fashion. I collect clothes and shoes the same way other people collect serious investments. I´ve always considered it a vice, inherited from my mother, very much influenced by the Iranian side of this Iranian-American writer. I don´t know where this body of knowledge came from—it´s not like she sat me down and showed me different pictures and tested me on which designers created which ensembles, but I´m stellar at discerning such details nonetheless. She is equally talented in such endeavors, and so, I blame her entirely.
Still, Mom and I are not mindless socialites. She´s a doctor, and I´m a writer from the popular "disenchanted attorney" school of writing. We are "professional" women, and still, we both adore fashion. I have personally skipped meals to buy clothes or shoes on more than one occasion—but that choice has always been an either/or proposition for me. A standard calculation of opportunity costs: one item I can keep and wear for years and the other I can digest and shit. Understandably, with this perspective, fashion has won over food quite consistently in my mind and in my life. Sensible shoes have never been part of my repertoire any more than sensible motorcycling.
But back to this starving, self-made refugee who so brutally interrupted my morning visit with the toilet—unlike me, she had a choice. I´m sure she made tons of money for this ad, so she can eat and likely even gets free clothes to boot. As much as I want to blame Calvin alone for choosing skeletons like this to grace his ads, I can´t just write off the model as some immature adolescent boy just because she looks like one. From the looks of things, she doesn´t appear to be mentally retarded, but how else can you explain her choices? I´m sure there´s some scientific proof to show that anyone that emaciated will eventually induce some form of retardation of her mental faculties as a result. I can´t imagine that maintaining a 22-inch waist and a triple-A cup bra-size wouldn´t result in some form of serious, potentially permanent, mental or physical impairment.
Don´t get me wrong, the "average-American-woman-is-a-size-16" kinds of statistics aren´t at all liberating to me either. Quite honestly, they disgust me, as that is clearly way too fat to blame solely on genetics. Look around the world. Even without the food-riots and rising price for staples such as rice and wheat, "normal" people in other countries simply don´t get as fat as "average" Americans. Not because they have superior genes or even because they are plagued with poverty and parasites, but because they know the difference between hungry and full, between production and consumption, and between healthy and sickly. It doesn´t hurt that they generally don´t douse their food with preservatives and fat, and that they throw some fresh fruit and vegetables down the hatch every once in a while. But still, even that can´t make up for the enormous disparity in size between the so-called average American woman and her counterpart in most every other corner of the world.
So, here I stand—between the "standard," "normal," American fat-ass and Calvin´s incredible shrinking white woman. I don´t look even close to either one of them, and you can be sure I´d never want to, but it´s taken me years to figure that out. As Americans, we are encouraged to push the limits, to live in the extremes, and as a result, we have these incredibly warped perceptions of reality.
But isn´t the goal of advertising to disguise reality? Indeed, we are marketing geniuses. We have managed to convince people that running when nobody is chasing you is a normal, healthy act; that Cheetos and Oreos are to be cherished; that gyms are a necessity; that hunger and desire are limitless vices that need to be fought instead of respected, and that prepackaged microwavable "meals," along with 15 different membership cards, are the only ways to defeat those vices.
Hence, our modern "cultivated" and "civilized" so-called Western society has yielded some seriously disgusting results. And advertising in particular, along with the proper accompanying culture and attitudes, has spawned a new social mutation with lethal consequences. The constant assault of absurd ideals of both unattainable "beauty" and pathetically dismal "normalcy" appears to be without end, and because there are too many causes to name or discern, I have chosen to point my outrage toward the most obvious target, and for me, this particular morning, that happens to be the vanishing act courtesy of Mr. Klein on page 8 of my latest issue of Marie Claire. Who knows, tomorrow it could be the billboard in front of my condominium complex or a new Jenny Craig commercial, but the outrage will remain for certain. There´s got to be some way to find a happy medium between the cocaine-powered anorexic automaton and the Cheez-It powered ever-expanding adiposity.
Give me a break! Or better yet, break this girl off a piece of your KitKat bar. Honestly, the ad is about as sexy as a hemorrhoid crème commercial. The model´s strapless white bikini seems to be achieving the impossible simply by failing to fall off. I imagine someone has strategically placed clips in the back of the suit to tighten it down to her inhuman size. I also imagine that she has strategically placed food into the same "do not consume" category as those little silica gel packets you find inside of nearly everything new in this country.
At any rate, normally, my toilet reading doesn´t require or elicit any genuine meaningful thought, but this ad struck me. I´ve since shown it to a few friends, most of whom have told me that she looked like any other model and that I´m one to talk, despite the fact that I easily have at least 20 pounds on this chick. Regardless, the ad still struck me as particularly appalling for some reason. As a result, justified or not, I cannot help but blame the designer, which is admittedly much easier in my mind, given the fact that I´ve always found Calvin Klein´s designs to be about as exciting and innovative as a cardboard box. I´m sure other designers employ equally malnourished models, but fuck it, I´m going to get specific. And in doing so, I´m assuring that this will not appear in any of the publications frequently neighboring my toilet. It turns out that for some reason most magazines aren´t too keen on publishing articles openly debasing and disparaging their advertisers. Shocking, right?
So, as a result, a new file of publications has been created on my desktop (specifically, noCKads.doc), meaning that, sadly, my readers will have to hunt down the ad in question in a less "progressive," more "mainstream" publication. Or you can just envision it in your head, relying on these words as a guide. If you´re reading this piece, you´re likely past the need for picture books anyway.
So, my immediate response (after thinking, "Damn, someone feed this child!") was that apparently, Mr. Calvin Klein never got the memo about heroin chic being out, way out—wet or dry. I should confess here that despite the absolute senselessness of it, I am a huge fan of fashion. I collect clothes and shoes the same way other people collect serious investments. I´ve always considered it a vice, inherited from my mother, very much influenced by the Iranian side of this Iranian-American writer. I don´t know where this body of knowledge came from—it´s not like she sat me down and showed me different pictures and tested me on which designers created which ensembles, but I´m stellar at discerning such details nonetheless. She is equally talented in such endeavors, and so, I blame her entirely.
Still, Mom and I are not mindless socialites. She´s a doctor, and I´m a writer from the popular "disenchanted attorney" school of writing. We are "professional" women, and still, we both adore fashion. I have personally skipped meals to buy clothes or shoes on more than one occasion—but that choice has always been an either/or proposition for me. A standard calculation of opportunity costs: one item I can keep and wear for years and the other I can digest and shit. Understandably, with this perspective, fashion has won over food quite consistently in my mind and in my life. Sensible shoes have never been part of my repertoire any more than sensible motorcycling.
But back to this starving, self-made refugee who so brutally interrupted my morning visit with the toilet—unlike me, she had a choice. I´m sure she made tons of money for this ad, so she can eat and likely even gets free clothes to boot. As much as I want to blame Calvin alone for choosing skeletons like this to grace his ads, I can´t just write off the model as some immature adolescent boy just because she looks like one. From the looks of things, she doesn´t appear to be mentally retarded, but how else can you explain her choices? I´m sure there´s some scientific proof to show that anyone that emaciated will eventually induce some form of retardation of her mental faculties as a result. I can´t imagine that maintaining a 22-inch waist and a triple-A cup bra-size wouldn´t result in some form of serious, potentially permanent, mental or physical impairment.
Don´t get me wrong, the "average-American-woman-is-a-size-16" kinds of statistics aren´t at all liberating to me either. Quite honestly, they disgust me, as that is clearly way too fat to blame solely on genetics. Look around the world. Even without the food-riots and rising price for staples such as rice and wheat, "normal" people in other countries simply don´t get as fat as "average" Americans. Not because they have superior genes or even because they are plagued with poverty and parasites, but because they know the difference between hungry and full, between production and consumption, and between healthy and sickly. It doesn´t hurt that they generally don´t douse their food with preservatives and fat, and that they throw some fresh fruit and vegetables down the hatch every once in a while. But still, even that can´t make up for the enormous disparity in size between the so-called average American woman and her counterpart in most every other corner of the world.
So, here I stand—between the "standard," "normal," American fat-ass and Calvin´s incredible shrinking white woman. I don´t look even close to either one of them, and you can be sure I´d never want to, but it´s taken me years to figure that out. As Americans, we are encouraged to push the limits, to live in the extremes, and as a result, we have these incredibly warped perceptions of reality.
But isn´t the goal of advertising to disguise reality? Indeed, we are marketing geniuses. We have managed to convince people that running when nobody is chasing you is a normal, healthy act; that Cheetos and Oreos are to be cherished; that gyms are a necessity; that hunger and desire are limitless vices that need to be fought instead of respected, and that prepackaged microwavable "meals," along with 15 different membership cards, are the only ways to defeat those vices.
Hence, our modern "cultivated" and "civilized" so-called Western society has yielded some seriously disgusting results. And advertising in particular, along with the proper accompanying culture and attitudes, has spawned a new social mutation with lethal consequences. The constant assault of absurd ideals of both unattainable "beauty" and pathetically dismal "normalcy" appears to be without end, and because there are too many causes to name or discern, I have chosen to point my outrage toward the most obvious target, and for me, this particular morning, that happens to be the vanishing act courtesy of Mr. Klein on page 8 of my latest issue of Marie Claire. Who knows, tomorrow it could be the billboard in front of my condominium complex or a new Jenny Craig commercial, but the outrage will remain for certain. There´s got to be some way to find a happy medium between the cocaine-powered anorexic automaton and the Cheez-It powered ever-expanding adiposity.
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